Technology
How the World’s Smartest Cities are Being Built
View a high resolution version of this graphic
How the World’s Smartest Cities are Being Built
View the high resolution version of today’s graphic by clicking here.
As the world’s biggest cities continue to sprawl with many millions of new people, they’ll look to many of the technologies and tactics covered in today’s infographic from Raconteur to work smarter – and not harder – for their inhabitants.
Why Cities?
Cities are the engines of modern society.
They power the global economy, consume vast amounts of resources, house the majority of the world’s population, and create much of the pollution and emissions that have scientists concerned about the future.
And while big cities consume a lot of resources already – this hardly compares to the megacities of the near-future. In fact, in our lifetimes, we will see massive urban areas in Africa and Asia with populations that swell to 50 million people or more.
That’s right – there will be swelling urban populations that consume more food, energy, and materials than most countries.
The Right Timing
While the prospect of optimizing for the problems of burgeoning metropolises may seem daunting, the timing is actually perfect. The arrival of the Internet of Things (IoT) – thanks to innovations in cheap sensor technology, big data, and predictive analytics – is making it possible to tackle all sorts of urban issues.
Integrating this, along with other advancements in information communication technology (ICT), into urban planning is the vision for smart cities:
But, enough on the broad strokes of this movement – here’s how specific changes are taking place.
Working Smarter, Not Harder
Here are some of the initiatives taken on by the people running the smartest cities today:
Smart roads
Monitoring vehicle and pedestrian levels to optimize or divert traffic according to conditions. Intelligent, adaptive fast and slow lanes for walking and cycling.
Smart buildings
Rooftop gardens or vegetation on sides of buildings to help with insulation. Optimization of heating, energy usage, lighting, and ventilation. Integrating photovoltaics and wind turbines into building designs.
Smart lighting
Intelligent and weather adaptive street lights to boost energy efficiency.
Smart waste management
Monitoring garbage levels in containers in real-time to optimize collection routes.
Smart grids
Energy consumption monitoring and management. Uses tech to detect and react to local changes in usage.
And cities aren’t the only thing becoming smarter. See how the home is becoming smarter, as well.
AI
Charted: The Jobs Most Impacted by AI
We visualized the results of an analysis by the World Economic Forum, which uncovered the jobs most impacted by AI.
Charted: The Jobs Most Impacted by AI
This was originally posted on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.
Large language models (LLMs) and other generative AI tools haven’t been around for very long, but they’re expected to have far-reaching impacts on the way people do their jobs. With this in mind, researchers have already begun studying the potential impacts of this transformative technology.
In this graphic, we’ve visualized the results of a World Economic Forum report, which estimated how different job departments will be exposed to AI disruption.
Data and Methodology
To identify the job departments most impacted by AI, researchers assessed over 19,000 occupational tasks (e.g. reading documents) to determine if they relied on language. If a task was deemed language-based, it was then determined how much human involvement was needed to complete that task.
With this analysis, researchers were then able to estimate how AI would impact different occupational groups.
Department | Large impact (%) | Small impact (%) | No impact (%) |
---|---|---|---|
IT | 73 | 26 | 1 |
Finance | 70 | 21 | 9 |
Customer Sales | 67 | 16 | 17 |
Operations | 65 | 18 | 17 |
HR | 57 | 41 | 2 |
Marketing | 56 | 41 | 3 |
Legal | 46 | 50 | 4 |
Supply Chain | 43 | 18 | 39 |
In our graphic, large impact refers to tasks that will be fully automated or significantly altered by AI technologies. Small impact refers to tasks that have a lesser potential for disruption.
Where AI will make the biggest impact
Jobs in infogramtion technology (IT) and finance have the highest share of tasks expected to be largely impacted by AI.
Within IT, tasks that are expected to be automated include software quality assurance and customer support. On the finance side, researchers believe that AI could be significantly useful for bookkeeping, accounting, and auditing.
Still interested in AI? Check out this graphic which ranked the most commonly used AI tools in 2023.
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